


Fragmented Stories

by SurferTikki



Category: Half-Life, Stellaris (Video Game), Warhammer 40.000
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 15:29:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13527201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SurferTikki/pseuds/SurferTikki
Summary: Random fragments of things I've written. So far, none of this has ever been finished. I will name each of the chapters based off of what they are named in my actual files, so forgive me if some of them give you a terminal illness. A lot of these stories are set in-universe, but some of it is either heavily or slightly inspired.





	1. Thing?

**Author's Note:**

> "Thing?" is a story based off of my experiences in the game Stellaris. It takes place during a war between the Interstellar Sloth Hordes and the Technocratic Commonwealth of Man and explores the creation of the first titan-scale warship.

“All systems, report,” the voice boomed over the ship intercom, crackling with its first use.  
“This is engineering, we are go.”  
“Weapons systems go.”  
“Subsystems go,” as the last report came in, the engines at the back of the great warship sputtered to life, casting an orange light over the drydock.  
“We are go for launch,” reported the ship captain, sitting in his seat, one leg laying over the other and a large smile on his face.  
“You are green to go. Docking clamps released. Good luck out there, captain.”  
\- - - - - - - - - - - - -  
Into the Wild Black Yonder  
\- - - - - - - - - - - - -  
The large round ship drifted forward out of the drydock, massive tubes detaching forcibly from its flanks as it lumbered into the void of space. Small maneuvering thrusters kept the ship going straight, and one massive thruster in the back, blasting into the back of what was the drydock.  
Indeed, it was the first ship ever launched that was this massive, and so new techniques would have to be learned over time until a launch without issue was completed. Already the workers of the drydock set about the construction of a second warship, and a third after that.  
As the ship cleared the dock, Great Unity came into view. Below them was a massive planet, bigger than Old Earth, for sure. Everyone on board the Titan ship looked out the nearest porthole, mesmerized by the serene planet.  
They were from there, but no planet is not even more beautiful when viewed from afar. Bright lights spread like cobwebs across the surface, and the water. Great expanses of aquamarine that glittered in the sunlight, and glowed from algae at night.  
But the captain, whose name was Wittmann, had his orders. As much as he wanted to take in the sights of Great Unity, there was a war to be fought, and he’ll be damned if it ended before he got there.  
Wittmann calmly pressed a button on his command chair. The intercom crackled again, “Men and women of the TCM Enfield, we embark today aboard the largest ship in the Commonwealth fleet. There is a war, and we must be ready to fight it. Some of you are veterans, some of you have not seen war with your own eyes,  
“But we have a chance. We may have been losing this eternal war, but now, with the very ship you stand upon, we have a chance to strike back at the Xenos.”  
A cheer erupted all throughout the ship. If any of the crewmen had had any doubts about enlisting, they were washed away by Wittmann’s speech. He, of course, was a well-known captain, with many victories under his belt. He was a hero on worlds that he hadn’t even heard of, a true figure of the Commonwealth.


	2. Last (Lost) Hope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Last (Lost) Hope" was a story heavily inspired if not in-universe with Half-Life. It had two names during the process. "Last Hope" was to detail the final strike against the Combine (Disparates), and ending with a rebel victory. "Lost Hope" was to detail the final strike in a negative light, with the Combine attaining victory. Eventually, it was merged into a feeling of failure as the rocket launched towards the DIsparate Dyson sphere.

Last Hope

How do you defeat something that is so much more powerful than you? Something so unimaginably powerful? You cannot blind it, for it would simply use one of its thousand eyes instead. You cannot cripple it, it has too many legs to be brought down.  
The Disparates. They are the monster that is without words. Fifteen years ago, Earth came into their sights. A massive whirl of black and red and orange appeared in the skies above every major city, and They streamed through. Earth, united under one common cause for once, lasted less than a workday.  
Now we live under them. They tell us what to do, what to eat, how to live our lives. Mindlessly, most of us follow their orders.  
Most. Not all.  
Some of us would rather fight, despite how strong our enemy is. In the streets, in the outskirts, and in the forests.  
\- - - - - - - - - - - - -  
In the streets of Warsaw, we struggle. They bring in their reinforcements from the portal, and They take our rebels and interrogate them within their Spires that are clustered atop the old Royal Castle. We would have stormed those blasted buildings, but They’ve made a moat of empty nothingness around the spires.  
And so here I am, fighting for control of the wall that surrounds the moat. The Disparates deploy their transhuman soldiers to fight us. Humans fighting humans. Even in the throes of alien invasion, people still will fight each other.  
A large road leads right up to the large blue angular wall. On either side are ruined or bombed-out buildings and the roads that lead into the plaza to the East have been blocked by rubble.  
There were snipers suppressing our main forces from the buildings surrounding the plaza. Grenades were lobbed back-and-forth by Disparate forces and our own. Empty pulse cartridges and shell casings littered the ground.  
Tall Disparate creatures roamed the surrounding streets, four-legged massive spider-like creatures that the Disparates had modified with pulse guns and decimator cannons. Their legs end in metal spikes, another example of manipulation by the Others.  
We called them stalkers, those giants. They tore up the buildings we used for cover, systematically crumbling each one. A few stalkers stalked around the plaza, having not been limited by the rubble in the streets, which they stepped over with ease.  
In the middle of the plaza was a broken fountain. It spewed no water, the pipes having long since been drained into the endless pit created by the Spires. Inside of it was a box filled with unarmed rockets that had been haphazardly thrown into the metal crate.  
Next to the box was a Laser-Guided RPG Launcher. We just called them RAGs, though. The rockets were mainly for hitting down the stalkers, who take a large number of explosives to get rid of in the first place, but they could be turned on the Disparate Transhuman soldiers with devastating effects.  
In the heart of the plaza, the battle rages on. A rocket passes over my head, followed by its exhaust. It strikes a stalker dead-on, bringing it down to the ground. The cloud of exhaust lingers behind.  
I poke my head from behind the concrete wall. There could be three or four. Probably more. Pretty difficult to tell when you’re being shot at.  
The Disparates returned fire on where my head had originally been. My rifle poked out from behind cover, and I fired blindly at where I thought they had been. I heard an inhuman scream and smiled beneath my scarf.  
Beside me, the radio, surprisingly still working, crackled to life.  
...Surrounded on all sides...No escape route. Regroup and fight your way out. We...falling back, I repeat, we are falling...  
A sigh escaped my lips. Surrounded. No way out. I turned to the rebels that fought alongside me. They too had heard the transmission. Under this much hail of fire, I knew we weren’t getting out. Not by any stretch of the imagination.  
Sombered, yet still with triumph, the rebels fought until the last man, the last bullet, had dropped.  
\- - - - - - - - - - - - -  
Elsewhere, deep within the snow-covered wastelands of Old Canada, another set of rebels were at work. With the Disparate technology, they could communicate over massive distances and were able to shield their signal. These rebels knew of the fight in Warsaw and saw it as a time to accelerate work on their project.  
In an old missile base that had been built long before the Invasion was an unused missile. An old nuclear one, at that. Since the only thing in the missile still working was what was stopping it from detonating, it had taken five months of work to get working.  
Now, instead of a simple nuke, they had a manned missile.  
The idea was to send the rocket through the portal that was placed over Ottawa. The Disparates had a massive base beneath it, and it was the staging grounds for when they drained Old Canada.  
Since no man had ever been through, they needed someone to guide the rocket after it got through the portal. Rewired Disparate technology helped with that, as well.  
It was time to send it through.  
\- - - - - - - - - - - - -  
I sat in the cockpit of the missile. It was a suicide mission, I knew that. No human could ever survive a nuclear blast when they are right next to it. And, hopefully, no alien could either.  
When the rocket launched, it was all I could do to keep seated. I wanted to run, hide, live to fight another day. All that stuff normal people want to do on the verge of death.  
I closed my eyes and said goodbye. It was for the good of the people of Earth. If this worked, which it had to, we had no other rocket to launch, the entirety of Earth might be free. Of course, we have no idea what it on the other side of that portal, but if the amount of troops and munitions that pour through it is any hint…  
The portal sat high in orbit, as most of the Disparates’ portals do. This rocket is a one-way trip, and I had a whole ten seconds to spend before I hit it. If I hit it.  
A feeling washed over me, and the lights went out. I had no way to see outside, it just suddenly felt… weightless. Had I hit the portal? Am I dead?  
Unbuckling from the belt, I drifted upward. Is this what it was like to be through space? I rebounded off of the hull of the ‘spacecraft’ and head towards the second half of the command module; it had windows.  
In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have done that. If I had just sat in the missile like a good space-human, I might not still be alive right now, talking to you. I don’t even know if I want to tell you what I saw.  
Are you saying I have to? For the betterment of mankind? Yeah. Where have I heard that before?  
It was a Dyson sphere. It glittered brilliantly in space. So pretty, so many colors. One would think it was as bright as the star it housed.


	3. Sector Overrun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Sector Overrun" detailed the fight between civil protection forces and rebels. It was to focus on the CP side, and the main character was meant to be the antagonist chasing the protagonist, a character with was never revealed.

Sector Overrun  
\-----  
City 1. A clear example of how totalitarian the Universal Union could be. Red banners lined the streets, draped over every street light, hung on every building front. All with the same symbol; a black eagle in the center, its wings outstretched, and a circle beneath it, containing the number one.  
Tall constructs adorned the top of nearly every building, each made of the same deep blue metal. Some served as camera towers or perhaps barracks. Some had a more dangerous purpose, like the dreaded Emancipator that sat atop the old tax building.  
Most citizens didn’t care about the obvious militant suppression. Sure, they weren't’ born into it, the invasion was still fresh in their minds, but they just didn’t care. Maybe they had realized the futility of trying to fight against a power that crushed the world’s armies in seven hours, or maybe they had a better life now than they did when poverty was prominent in the Old City 1.  
Either way, criminals, and rebels were still prominent. Countless examples were made of the aggressors, but that only served to make their resolve stronger. The Combine Overwatch soldiers didn’t understand human emotion. Not anymore, anyway.  
A sleek bullet traced across the sky, followed by a trailed of red. The small VTOL carried a small squad of Civil Protection soldiers. Its engines left an obvious presence in against the deep blue sky of dusk.  
Within the holds of the vehicle, the soldiers sat in silence. They totaled at six, just enough to qualify them for the job they were heading out to do.   
Four of the six wore black armor over vital organs and their appendages, with red flair painted on by the group themselves. Along with their kevlar suits and ceramic gas masks, they both looked like and were a formidable foe to any rebels that dared stand up to them.  
One of them wore a large black tank on his back and was equipped with heavier armor than his normal counterparts. If the flamethrower wasn’t enough to scare off rebels, his flame-colored mask with red optics proved to be another source of terror.  
The final soldier and the one closest to the door of the VTOL was the commander. A large red plus was on the front of his armor, designating him as the squad’s medic, as well. He carried a large bag on his side and had a powerful magnum at his side at all times.  
Not many commanders volunteered to be the squad medic, but it was one of the many reasons he had gained his squad’s trust and respect. On top of that, he also had proven multiple times that he had a high amount of courage, something not all too common amongst the human loyalists known as the Civil Protection.  
A thud resonated throughout the cabin of the ship, and the door began to drop. Every soldier stood up and prepared to charge out, their weapons at the ready. The sounds of the battle beyond drifted into the cabin before the door even hit the concrete of the thin road they had landed on.  
The crack of gunfire and the shattering of glass molotovs sounded from far ahead. As the squad of soldiers got closer and closer, and the sounds got louder and louder, the commander ordered his troops into a tight formation, checking corners down alleys until they met up with their allied forces.  
Civil Protection forces fired at the rebels from the cover of somewhat intact buildings. Some holes had been blown into the sides of them, but they remained standing.  
On the rebel side, most sat inside of or near craters caused by hunter-chopper bombings. Some tried to get into the buildings on their side of the alley, but the entrenched gun on the CP side just about prevented that.  
As soon as the squad was in the area, they were given orders.  
“Echo, this is Command Squad Glacius. You are under our command now. Clear those craters with your flamethrower!”  
The squad stood still, staring at their own commander, whom they trusted much more than a command squad that wasn’t even in battle.  
If they wanted any different command, they didn’t get it. Their commander, whose call-sign was Echo-Com, simply shrugged. Echo-Flame accepted that as confirmation and began his slow, hulking walk towards the rebels’ craters. Echo-1, -2, -3, and -4 provided covering fire and walked alongside him.  
At the sight of the pre-ignited flamethrower, some of the rebels jumped ship. They ran back into the alley from where they had come, even though they knew it had been cut off. They’d rather take their chances with more soldiers than to be cooked alive.  
When E-F reached the edges of the craters, rebel bullets sparking off his heavy armor, he unleashed his whole tank on them.  
Flame spewed from the weapon, coating and sticking to everything. As the flames died down, it was revealed that the rebels had also.  
E-F spoke into his melted vox-com unit, “Area clear.”  
The new recruits of Echo winced at his raspy voice but knew better than to ask about it. The perils of being a flame unit were too well-known.  
“Fan out, check the bodies,” E-C commanded.  
So, as the squad poked and prodded through the fallen rebels, the remnants of the other CP squad moved up alongside them, taking the craters as their own. In light of the attack, the propaganda speakers changed from their normal repeating talks. In replace of the normal calm man was an angrier voice.  
“Attention citizens of City 1. Due to recent Social Infestation, rations have been discontinued until further notice. On a similar note, curfew is now in effect. All civilians out past 1600 will be shot on sight. That is all.”  
The speakers crackled off with a whine, followed by the simultaneous slamming of multiple doors. E-C didn’t know anyone who wanted to hide other people in their house. Not in this day-and-age.  
“Enemy spotted. Retreating into that house there. Echo, follow ‘em.”  
E-F ditched his flamethrower and tank, favoring a lighter approach when inside buildings. Besides, the thing was empty anyway.  
Picking up a weapon that was not unlike what his squad-mates used, he charged after them to keep up. By the time he had gotten there, however, the door was ready to be breached.  
E-1 and E-3 stood at either side. E-2 slammed in the door with a battering ram, and E-1 and -3 ran in, covering different sides of the room. Bullets cut down the drywall, and the foul smell of gunpowder filled the air.  
E-F sneaked under the gunfight and checked the stairs. The light was on. He made his way up the steps, careful not to alert whoever might be waiting for a lone soldier to appear.


End file.
